Most of us know that taxpayers own 84% of the Royal Bank of Scotland but few of us know that between October 2007 and March 2008, the bank shared confidential pricing information with Barclays on loans to big professional services firms, such as accountants and solicitors. Fred Goodwin was chief executive at the time.
Barclays blew the whistle on the deal because, by stepping up to the plate, it will escape a fine. The fine was trimmed from £33.6 million after RBS admitted its guilt and agreed to co-operate with the Office of Fair Trading.
RBS said: “This is a deeply regrettable and isolated case from nearly two years ago, involving only two members of staff, one of whom has left the Bank and one other who faces ... further investigation.”
Barclays said: “On March 17, 2008, Barclays voluntarily notified the OFT that it had become aware that certain members of its Professional Services team in Barclays commercial banking unit had been unilaterally approached from outside Barclays in a manner which we regarded as inappropriate.”
Only two members of staff involved in breaking the law? This may have occurred before taxpayers bailed out the ineptly managed RBS, but it does show how dishonourable banking was and still seems to be, as one of those connected with the incident is still facing investigation.
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26 comments:
Another Stealth Tax!!!!!!
Labour poured billions into the banks to protect their own incompetence from being discovered.
and it looks like the big banks in USA have been up to much the same rate fixing.....but this time the borrowers were local government.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/bidr-m31.shtml
Now i didn't know that...
We don't get to hear how much the price sharing would have profited these institutions, how widespread it is etc. It probably goes well into the 10s or 100s of billions.
Yet it's not a big story. Unlike Salmond's 60K which he's entitled to.. Amazing the people are sucked into trivia. If The Herald told people to jump in the Clyde many would do it. I mean if supposedly political bloggers get sucked in then what about the rest of the population?
North Korea threatens the US with a nuclear attack and it doesn't get covered even on alternative media like blogs, instead we get trivia. Is this because if N. Korea seems dangerous then people would wonder why the f*** we're bothering with Afghanistan? Does big business decide what's important for us?
A multi-trillion pound fraud in the gold and silver market which can bring down the pound and blogs are covering Salmond's 60K entitlement?
Are we adults or children being told when and when not to pay attention and obediantly complying?
Anyway, back to the horoscope.
And they and the other banks are scamming the public (at a time when interest rates are not worth diddly) with their rotten ISAs...
There's just no way any of them will ever be honest is there?
And they have us over a barrel. You just can't live in this world without a bank account. They know it and they stuff us every which way over it.
You couldn't make it up could you Joe.
That's right OR. It's taken 2 years for this to surface.
You've reminded me about that muddypaws. I'd forgotten to look into it further. Many thanks for the link.
We learn something every day Killer, but not nearly as much as we should. Most is covered up.
It's amazing how upset people become about trivia Alex when this kind of business is happening.
If you do a post about the N Korea affair I'll gladly link to it, although I could link to your current one.
You're right, people would rather use their grey matter arguing about little when there are serious issues around the globe.
No tris, I don't see any way either.
Frankly Subrosa, I shall continue to have little confidence in the regulatory structures which [supposidly] govern and monitor the financial sector in the UK.
Until the BoE is given the kind of authority that George Osborne talked about, and we abandon Gordon Browns disasterous tripartide regulatory structure, these kinds of stories do not surprise me in the least.
That said however, is there not a way of digging around until we can pin something on Sir Fred?...no...on the rule of law and all that...sometimes these bankers do push ones restraint!!
You and me both Dean. The whole system is still a mess yet the government do nothing about it.
What's the point in Fred being pinned against the wall? It was a private business really. He's come off well though with help from his political chums.
I remember Brown as chancer sorry chancellor bringing in rules that made it impossible to not have a bank account.
He's hand in glove with the megaBanksters. I expect that cash is going to become scarcer and people will be pushed towards plastic. That way they can monitor everything you do, keep you controlled by debt and increase taxes in the form of bank charges.
It's like the feudal days when landlords and the church practically owned the population.
The orginial definition of 'Liberty' was freedom from debt bondage. Keep that little piece of info in mind as the banks get come sniffing around for their next taxpayer bail-out.. They'll take your money from you and then lend it (maybe) at painful rates of interest, bleeding you dry. And you gave them your money so they could lend it to you.
That's the business Gordon Brown's in.
The old fashioned method of under the mattress sounds better and better Alex.
You have to laugh; or go into hibernation.
The banks are a cartel. A cartel that has been allowed in a systematic way to create under the guise of convenience a fundamental position of control in all our lives.
Our governments have connived with this and have capitalised politically on it.
A perfect product of perpetual flow and elastic profit. Governments loved it, ours especially, lesser mortals wondered why water could suddenly flow up hills.
And, just in case anybody wants to make an issue between the idiocy of RBS as opposed to the idiocy of Barclays, remember it was they who were the final competitors for the Dutch bank Avro and there was only a shaving in the final bid that gave it to RBS.
Our governments are still conniving RA. Without them the banks would have to behave like normal businesses.
Connive Rosa!
Strange isn't it that the banks are too big to fail but the country can?
I think the excuse a politician would use is global RA, the banks are global. Their downfall was global too.
Using the word global takes the problem away from their own front door.
Global Rosa? Then here's the question to ask.
If all of the countries have put themselves in hock to replace the money supposedly lost by the banks where did all that money come from?
That is the question RA and I should think the answer is the Bilderburg bunch.
Hi Rosie,
Unfortunately under the mattress ain't gonnie work. They've printed a lot of new money and given it to the banks. That way it doesn't hit main street. It will eventually though and inlation will cause that money under the bed to be devalued hugely.
Now if you talk about gold and silver bars under the floorboards..
Hi Alex, surely it won't matter where it is if it's going to devalue?
As the value of the paper money goes down the value of the gold/silver goes up. Metals are not dynamic so you can't run round spending money in shops with lumps of gold but in the sense of money being a store of wealth, it can become dangerous. When cash loses its role as a store of wealth everyone piles into gold or silver because that is very good at storing wealth. For example you could buy the same amount of loaves of bread with an ounce of gold 2, 000 years ago as you can now.
The reason I mention keeping gold/silver under the bed is because people buy it on contract and a piece of paper can't be trusted so make sure you have delivery of your metal. And if you keep it in a vault it can still be confiscated like it was in the US in the 30s. So under the bed is the safe option..
There is one way money under the mattress can help. If they are going to have a staged devaluation then they'll close the banks or only allow limited withdrawals. In that sense it would be better to have some cash (if you wanted to keep some for incidentals) in different accounts or under the mattress..
Alex, I heard just the end of the money programme on R4 today and a woman was saying just that. If I did have cash I would keep it under the mattress.
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